Watched Sunrise this evening. Stunning!

For Sunday--

Lonely Drifter Karen Fall of Spring. First song, Dis-In-Motion, a bit Karen Carpenter? Yeah. They are European. I don't think they are part of the professional indiepop scene though. Not nearly as odious as Northern Portrait. I know everyone loves Northern Portrait but to my off kilter sensitivity something seems very not right with them. This, Lonely Drifter Karen, is delightfully odd. Her voice is odd, it is not longer anything resembling Karen Carpenter but really it is a dead ringer at the start. Or not. Why do I not like the Northern Portrait? You might ask but then I know it isn't the question that anyone has asked. I imagine them having really expensive equipment, smoking girly cigarettes and wearing three piece suits while recording their albums. Suits are great. I love them. But I just imagine that these guys don't look good in suits. They seem to be the EU approved version of indiepop as if some bureaucrat from Brussels arrived at their recording sessions and gave them a manual on how to write soulless pop music. I am far too harsh. But what about Lonely Drifter Karen? I am indifferent. If Kate Bush had been born in the back seat of a Balaton and raised under a cheerless communist dictatorship and then later made a record for lonely EU bureaucrats it might sound like this. I was going to write about the Northern Portrait record but I won't. I never listen to it. Everyone else loves it, read what In Love With These Times has written about it, he's much more talented than I am. But remember this that everyone else loves Captured Tracks and we'll see in three years who is right about that one. Are these synthesized horns? I like jaunty, bouncy bits. It's ecstatic. They look northern European, not very cool. Something like people from Denver. One of the things I disapprove of Denver is there isn't anything that distinguishes people from Denver from anywhere else. Perhaps this is true of most places now with the global hegemony of mook culture. Tattoos, slang, red bull, Colbie Caillat, it's the same everywhere you go. I grew up in Detroit. That is the problem, everyone here grew up somewhere else and so this place is less defined by the people than by the geology. Second track. Gentle plucks on guitar, more whispery coos, a bit freak folk, Coco Rosie or Joanna Newsom. I glanced at a bit of biographical information for LDK and relentlessly are they compared to Joanna Newsom. No idea why. This is pop music. It isn't precious. The voice is definitely Joanna Newsom or Coco Rosie, I am unsure why I have taken umbrage at the comparison. They have received loads of mainstream press for a band I've never heard of. It is amazing how in this world we live in I can go from being entirely unaware of a band from Belgium and to an uninformed essayist on their music just a few moments later. I don't take writing on music seriously. The worst thing in the world would be to sit down with this record and make academic observations over the timbre, the production, the whatever it is that matters to music critics. Music critic must be a dreary existence, there is so much dreadful dreadful music around and people are mostly completely unaware of how awful they really are and so without inhibition they post their dreadful recordings to music "critics" all over the world and out of a sense of obligation to to the music critic guild these poor schlubs labour over three or four sentences that pronounce judgement on some dozen of months of effort. Such power. Laud-able. I am full of English Civil War puns. Well not full. But I am on my way to being an expert on the English Civil War, I have finished four books on the subject, just seven more and I qualify as expert. After I am certified as an expert I can confidently appear in the amazon reader review section and tell you what I really think of Blair Worden. Strangely I am reading, in another window, someone praising Gerrard Winstanley, He's from the same town as Richard Ashcroft. Has anything of value ever emanated from Wigan? Perhaps after I have achieved my expert status in my current discipline I will then move on to the favorite sons of Wigan. Fourth track now, more of a torch song, jazz blow, pretty nice. This isn't a fabulous record. It is why I can write so lucidly about things that have very little to do with the music because for the most part even as it is pleasant and mildly diverting it is easily cast aside as I meander down tender tangential avenues of inquiry. This is a bit Norah Jones. Is this why they have received much acclaim? Are they part of the Starbucks generation? This would not be out of place on a Starbucks playlist. IN the burrito restaurant today I heard the Smiths Please Please Let Me Get What I want. No one else in the restaurant seemed as pleased as I was by its inclusion on the soundtrack to an early dinner. Finally they've removed Animal Collective. Next track, not jazz, quirky pop. The Cardigans might have made a record like this if they hadn't married someone from Shudder to Think. I saw Shudder to Think live once. They opened for My Bloody Valentine. They didn't look like the sorts that might marry a Cardigan. The Cardigans wrote brilliant light hearted pop songs. Then they wanted to be taken seriously. So strange. What is this desire to be taken seriously and why can you only be taken seriously if you are not writing catchy pop ditties? Who wrote the serious rock star manual? This track is very nice. I am meant to be writing about serious music I suppose. My favorite record from last year was probably Sally Seltmann and it wasn't very serious but it was the record I wanted to listen to more than any other that was released. I wonder since most top records of the year lists at more important publications than this included mainly the same 50 records in different order does this mean that those records that mostly I had never even heard of were listened to more than any others? is that how the worth of a recording is measured? When the Dead C foolishly win a poll on I Love Music for favorite New Zealand record does it mean that people actually listen to the Dead C? I find that very unlikely. Is it humanly possible to endure through an entire Dead C song? the Dead C should be on Captured Tracks. Again, disclaimer, Bruce Russell is a marvelous human being, he sold me records in Dunedin. I am tiring of this album. I may delete it after I have finished not writing about it. I was thinking of including a load of nonsense about To The Lighthouse but that novel is astounding and marvelous and gorgeous(perhaps the most beautiful book I have ever read) and this album doesn't deserve to be in such elevated territory. Another track has started, my dad might like this album. I don't think I am really into this at all. Why am I writing about it? Unknown. There are beautiful things to revel in instead, there is To The Lighthouse and there is Sunrise. There is the lament for FW Murnau who died, tragically, just a few years after Sunrise was released. What masterpieces lay unmade within his heart? Surely not enough people process his loss with a longing in their heart for the genius erased from the pre-ordained continuum. Janet Gaynor is far more attractive when she does not speak. I hope that isn't rude. I've only seen her in one speaking role. Squeaky. Did Margaret Livingston have a career later on? We are on track 8, 2/3rds of the way through. A scrolling piano-led melody, her whistle vocals, blah blah blah. Gerrard Winstanley would support my having "borrowed" this record. He was a digger. Not a member of the rubbish Scottish pop band, not a member of the Aussie Infantry, but rather one of those who proclaimed that god's bounty belonged to everyone and that untilled land was free to be exploited by the common man for the common good. They don't come off as well as the Levellers in my mind. But I am a jingoistic war monger. I would fall for autocrats such as Rainsborough and Lilburne. Ninth track now, a bit odder, I like odd ones best, she is wailing the chorus into an empty conference room, there is some wailing on creaking instruments accompanying her but it is not so interesting. The new PJ Harvey album is much more interesting. I should have decided to write about that one instead. But I did not. In a new history of our own time written four hundred years in the future will Sean Fanning assume the mantle of Gerrard Winstanley of his age? Possibly. It will be written in mandarin. Another slow temptress number, a bit dull. I am still drinking so much milk. I'd rather be drinking milk than listening to this actually, we'll call it a day, I am sure it's more brilliant than a Northern Portrait record but then so was my last glass of milk.

Motion Sickness of Time Travel Seeping Through the Veil of the Unconscious. I just read an article or two about the conflict between elites as the champion of "high" culture and the undeniable yankee spirit of contempt for the elites by championing of middle brow or "low" culture. I wasn't convinced. Except of course when they discussed the fact that all best movie, best record, best book lists are nearly identical, a random reassortment of rankings is all that divides them. Well except for the ILX best records list because I haven't heard of most of the things that have appeared on it thus far. But I am not interested in indie rock or black metal. The one article seemed to champion the american ideal of "contempt for contempt", I believe that is how it was put, but I would put it down to laziness. One article was in the Guardian and the other was in Chronicle of Higher Education. One lambasted popular consumers for not challenging themselves and the other applauded the lazy for setting the critics straight. I haven't seen "The Social Network", I bet it isn't great, mostly because Jesse Eisenberg is in it and I bet he plays young billionaire as fidgety, blinking Lightning Bolt fan, the same as in all of his movies. I've only seen one other of his movies. I am making a fool of myself. I know. What has this to do with Motion Sickness of Time Travel? Nothing. I haven't seen it appear on any best of lists. I did see that Sarah Kirkland Snider appeared as third best record on Textura.org. Bravo! I have picked up loads of exciting things because of Textura.org. Things like Twine. This is the sort of record that might be praised on Textura.org. It is filled with long songs, repetitive figures and charming wordless vocals that evolve to a vaporous coo of tender thoughts. First track is soft, unobtrusive, a bit shoegazey. Second track has begun a bit more insistent on the programming, static and brutal ambience. The wordless, well there may actually be words, one would need an aural microscope in order to make them out within the mix. Words are unimportant. It has a chant-like quality, she isn't chanting but the movement in and out of the mix remind of the child sucked into a television in Poltergeist and the intermittent quality of her communication from the netherworld is duplicated nicely. I know even less about Motion Sickness of Time Travel than I did about Saturday Looks Good to Me. Did you know Betty Marie Barnes is in Sweden now? HAs she married a Swedish pop star? A swedish footballer? Is she modeling Swedish footwear? Unknown. Motion Sickness for Time Travel is one person, female, a student. This could be her dissertation on isolation the amniotic sensation created by the record is conjuring seraphic images, elusive and distant, perfect. I could make a record like this. I always type that. But really it is a repeating pleasant sound and her voice processed through eleven layers of reverb. I could do this. if I had ambition to. If I made my vocation my avocation, as Robert Frost once demanded, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. I read books for work. I read Xenophon. I have read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, what better manual for organizing a corporation and exhibiting entrepreneurial zeal could exist? This record feels like the next logical step for Cloudboy. This is the record Demarnia Lloyd would have made the next time she spent a month in a grain silo. I am almost certain of this. So really it could come disguised next Halloween as a Demarnia Lloyd solo record and we would all be convinced. It's a dream. It has been unfathomably cold today. Our workforce was shrunken considerably due to this and so I was able to play music at work at more reasonable volume levels. I did not play this. I played Kort. I played Jonny. I played the Love Language. Everything about them radiated warmth. This record sounds more like the emptiness of space, the stillness of absolute zero even as it causes my senses to flutter about because there is more going on than one would first discern. Is it a dissertation on the need for meaning in human existence? I have finished half of To The Lighthouse and I am in love. The idea of writing a book from the point of view of each of the main character's unknowable thoughts is brilliant. Perhaps I only believe this because I live nearly all of my own existence inside of my own head. I don't display and signifiers to the world at large. Am I happy? Am I sad? You would never know. Not that anyone desires to know. The inside of my head could sound a lot like this record. Now more wordless breathiness and guitars??? and ambience. The empyrean force that envelops all o the tracks here. Her next record might really be amazing. Sometimes you can sense that songwriters or sound recorders have an innate sense of likability in that they are able to create things that are instantly pleasing to the ear. The doofs on ILX would decry this as sentimentality or earnestness but this is a gorgeous listening experience. Or so I would opine. There was one point in the Chronicle of Higher Education piece that hit me between the eyes and that was the refusal of many people to say whether something is good in any larger context other than subjective experience because we lack the capacity to describe why something is good or at least why something is better than some other thing. I laughingly disparage my inadequacy when it comes to assessing music because I don't know anything about music. This is purely an emotional website. I record my emotional reactions to records and do not attempt to extrapolate those feelings into any larger sense of objective truth. I wish that most music criticism would flow from the same motivation. I am not ever convinced by anything Pitchfork writes. They lack gravitas, sure, the lead review tomorrow could be written by an 18 year old who wants to tell you about why you should vote for Olivier Besancenot in the next election for President in France while also insisting that Spoon is the greatest thing ever. Is there a more soul deadening band than Spoon? Probably. But my reaction to a Spoon record is sheer diffidence, I can't imagine having a strong opinion on them either way. and this record is hardly revolutionary, it is static and whirrs, it is not unlike the new Seefeel record in that but there is a human warmth that permeates everything even through the wires and circuits. How it is that some electronic music conveys this and some electronic music does not is probably explainable through music theory and simple deductions but the moans and dissonance coursing through my headphones at the moment seems like basic, primal emotion created the same as a painting, the same as a poem, or a soliloquy by Lily Briscoe. Are all Virginia Woolf books this brilliant? I had only read Orlando previously. I will read them all now, of this I am certain. Especially since when I tried to find more books on the Levellers I was dismayed to find that copies retailed at several hundred dollars. How will I read the Putney Debates?! Online? Ugh. Track now is Magnetism and it has morphed from a cacophony of human emotion to the gentle rumble of a warp reactor, the chiming repetition of a Frigidaire, the rapturous calls of a Gray whale. Very Nice. Second to last track now. Auto Suggestion some things more closely resembling notes in the introduction. More spare, narrower, more intimate until the gradual accumulation of momentum. Artificial birdsongs, a bird feeder with nine volt batteries attached, a garden symphony on an October morning. All of the tracks have a smoothed out simplicity, it is very Sonic Boom in that. Vocals have arrived, more ethereal still. A very long track this. Why dod some bands make exceedingly long tracks such as this and others write short pop songs? Does the nature of this sort of drone music lend itself to duration? Is it an attempt to mesmerise by the repetition of simple musical phrases over and over, the reversion back to secure notions of childhood lullaby. I don't know. That was my attempt to sound pretentious. Now rain song. The sky pouring forth, a baptism. As I said, or as I meant to say, this music fits the weather. We are very near to absolute zero at the moment. It did not reach above 0 degrees fahrenheit today. Cheers. It is on evenings such as this and when listening to beautiful records such as this that loneliness seems a less than viable option. As I worry about pipes freezing and the thin layer between life robbing congelation and my dream life I wake always alone and always plagued with melancholia. It is cold enough to freeze human blood, to turn the soul stirring animus to crystal dispassion in a moment. This music has turned my meteorological ear to poetry. Last track, more disjointed, again very Seefeel. How excited she must have ben to have finally heard a new Seefeel record. I've listened to the new Seefeel record. I prefer this record to Seefeel's new record. I prefer Succour to this record. More coos and babels. Could I make a track similar to this? Possibly. I went to graduate school and many are unaware that my first website on Geocities was a disaster on 'How to Construct a Time Machine'. I know, rather unimaginative of me to appropriate a bit of Alfred Jarry's glamour for myself. I never did get around to making a time machine or to wearing a holster with loaded pistol but I did talk a bit about shiny bicycle handles. This is an odd track to end on. I would have reversed the order placing this Ch-Vox'ian atmosphere as second to last and the previous bit of extended bliss as the record's final farewell. I wouldn't change anything else. The end. Unplug.

Mighty Clouds Mighty Clouds. The last few entries have been about ambition. Partly. Certainly not on my part. I am a slacker. But an appreciation of ambition as a concept. This record is not ambitious. It is lovely all the same. It is Fred Thomas and Betty Marie Barnes, two who were once together in Saturday Looks Good to Me. Then she wasn't in Saturday Looks Good to Me. Perhaps this was due to her height, she is statuesque and beautiful. I haven't any idea how tall Fred Thomas is. In spite of living in Michigan mostly at the same time as when Saturday Looks Good To Me first became a going concern I never did see them play live. No matter. I didn't see them when they played here in Denver either. I did just recently see a clip of Rocketship at Zoots. I did see that show, way back when. Dustin Reske is not tall. This record is mostly acoustic guitar, charming Betty vocals and occasionally a bell or twinkle in the background. Thankfully Fred does not sing. He's got his strengths, but mostly, lately, he sings like an emo. Second track now, acoustic guitar, double tracked vocals, high/low, charms abound, it's really really terrific. The next entry will probably revert back to ambition but sometimes it is pleasant to revel in the mythology of a guy and his guitar and a girl and her voice(possibly a tambourine) plugging in and making a record in an afternoon. No idea how many afternoons it took to make this record. I don't seem to have any answers at all. Mythologies are interesting things, my former boss had created a mythology that he carried about and informed everyone about rather emphatically. Strangely he always came out on top in his gauzy little anecdotes. I don't have a mythology, I carry around a toolkit of pathos instead. My new boss has his own mythology. I have worked with him for rather a long time so I am aware when this mythology contradicts history but I keep silent when these fudges come out of the shadows. He is my boss. Perhaps one day we will sit together and create our own mythology as a duo fighting crime and creating world shattering excel spreadsheets in the face of danger. But for now he'll only generically populate my banal entries on the Mighty Clouds. The first three songs were great. The third song is too short. The fourth song is also great. Betty Marie Barnes was in Pas/Cal when the Pas/Cal was taking on water below the surface. I don't blame her. It has already been somehow, here, sometime, established that when the bass player left they died too many little deaths and could not recover. She was young. She is still young. Isn't she? I don't know. This sounds like Saturday Looks Good To Me demos, marvelous demos. Perhaps they have a mythology, about their origins on the mean streets of Detroit, being car jacked and being forced to play pop hits in the back seat of a Dodge Stratus to keep from being whacked by crazy kids from the mean streets of Bloomfield Hills. Matthew Jacobson, O.G. I went to school in Bloomfield Hills. I was not gangsta. Fifth song is also great. This record was mostly slept on. Has it been officially released even? What label are they on? I drove to buy a book today. To The Lighthouse, I am very excited about it. Brand new for 2.99. I drove past the Thornton town hall and there is a statue that has been recently erected and it is in the presumed shape of some vague platitude about good will or working together can make us stronger. It is two hands in embrace, snooze, but then this is all that is acceptable today with the new egalitarian spirit allowing a selfish wrongheaded interpretation of anything because fascist concepts like the truth or history are outmoded. In this country riven with historical figures that could be moulded into mythological beings we are stuck with fuzzy concepts of togetherness and diversity. And yet in Detroit when they cast a fist of fury at least it was Joe Louis' fist, ready to stand vigilant against the trespassers from Windsor trying to float across the river to escape the tyranny of Socialism. But then there isn't much familiarity with the shared mythology of this country or anything at all. I mentioned Prometheus at work when we were discussing the "borrowing" of an idea from another company and blank stares around the table. Fred Thomas has probably not written a song about Prometheus. Graeme Downes would. Sixth song is also great. That is 6 for 6 thus far. It was perfect Mighty Clouds weather this weekend, brilliant sunshine, gentle chinooks and the temperatures soared into the 60s. Tuesday the forecast high is near zero. Ah, Colorado. Seventh song has started, guitar recorded down a telephone wire, a count-in, double tracked vocals, I am assuming each voice belongs to Betty Marie. Would I address her as Betty Marie should I ever meet her on the street? "Hello Betty Marie!". Or "Betty!"? "Marie!"? This track is a bit indiepop circa 1990, very DC/Slumberland or Cambridge/Harriet once upon a time. I would call her Betty Marie. Next track, still acoustic, still dreamy, still great. Why has this record not attracted the sort of love it deserves? The last Saturday Looks Good to Me I avoided due to it being an all-Fred all the time affair. When he started he was a bit Gedge, Bright Green Gloves was totally Gedge but recently he's trying to convey his pain and it is painful, sometimes. Ah, now a Morrissey cove. Even this has endless charms. Is Your Arsenal actually better than any of the Smiths records? Possibly. Well save Louder than Bombs which isn't a real album but which just may be the greatest collection of music ever made. Certain People I Know. I have a memory strongly associated with this song. My oldest brother and me driving to Windosr, downwind of Joe Louis' fist and arriving at my Aunt's home blasting Your Arsenal. This, with my brother the King Kobra and Pearl Jam fan. Your Arsenal was pretty rocking after all. Surprisingly they did not suspect us at the border, we were not strip searched for illegal contraband. We hadn't anything to declare, except for the greatness of Morrissey but that is already expressly conveyed in NAFTA. Next track, not a cover. I don't think. It could be a cover, similar to the sort that is on records hipper than I am. This is also great. So is this the greatest record of all time? No. There are drums on this track. I am thinking these are the first appearance of drums on this record. I bet Fred plays drums. People in Michigan are crafty. I never saw Saturday Looks Good To Me but I did see Godzuki and they switched instruments on practically every song, Erika in her red starred white blouse on drums singing groovy pop songs was a dream. Erika was later in Saturday Looks Good To Me,s he could be still, she could have played on that last track. who can be sure. Last track, a short one, has fairy tale qualities, has folky tra-la-la backing vocals. Detroiters, they are an innocent breed.

Oh? Pinkie Brown is coming to theaters? But in the 1960s!? Ugh. Will it be released here?

Update: And Pinkie looks to be played by someone who is around 40. Oh dear.

Update: Argh, it is the old man who played Ian Curtis. He was too old to play Ian Curtis and Ian Curtis was not meant to be 17.

Update: Aye, there is already an existing movie from 1947. I must see this.

New Devotchka-WOW! :-)

In case you missed the Magick Heads as much as I do.



Care of Fire Escape Talking.

I have only just discovered the Sarah Kirkland Snider record on my ipod that is absolutely wonderful. More later.

Update: Above I linked to, well I never link to, Fire Escape Talking. I don't link because I am worried that I might offend someone although I don't think I've said an unkind word about them. They aren't one of the twee. Well I am always somewhat perplexed over their obsession with the Puddle but then that is not an uncommon affliction. Everyone in New Zealand seemingly has a story about some legendary Puddle show way back when. I saw the Puddle play. Lesley Paris played drums. It was pretty good. Then I saw George and his retinue in a McDonalds later in the week. I am not sure what he ordered. But I imagine it, the Puddle devotion, is the same strain of malady that causes some to champion East Village or to proclaim 'eh, it's ok, but you should have heard the demos'. Nothing to do with Sarah Kirkland Snider. She's labeled a composer. This is classical music or else how to explain it being named classical record of the year by someone important. It's not really a classical record is it? It sounds like a load of pop songs. A lovely load. It sounds like an Ian Masters record really. Surely this record took hundreds of fresh faces and dextrous fingers and reams of staff paper. Ian did his things on a computer. The singer is female. She sounds like Ian Masters but then he was always a bit girly. This is a magnificent record, based on Homer's Odyssey, stuff to rouse the soul. Dramatic climax now, lovely voice, shards of strings, thundering percussion, drama, whispers in the night, marvelous! I recently discovered some Ian Masters tracks that I hadn't heard before. Two Sun Tears. Sounds like Esp.Summer. it is one of the great mysteries of life, the relative silence of Ian Masters over the past 16 years. He is in Japan now, a Shogun, planning his usurpation of the Hesei, perhaps as the true Pindar ready to abscond with the rightful place in place of a Rothschild. Or not. But now we have this record and aside from the singer being female we can close our eyes and easily imagine this as a sequel to Spoonfed Hybrid. Second track, static, electricity, drum machines, violins, hush hush go the vocals. I am not closely following the libretto. A poet wrote the lyrics, well yeah Homer, but a real poet rewrote Homer, not some page from the time before relevance. I don't remember her name. She could sing like Ian Masters too. Strange that she should remind me more of Ian Masters than Meriel Barham. Kuchen covering Herodotus coming soon. This sounds like a pop song, like Efterklang without being silly, pompous and exceedingly dull. I mentioned beauty forever in the Third Eye Foundation record and this record has beauty covered. I haven't seen it mentioned in Fire Escape Talking. He's on and on about Ghost Wave in his most recent post. He mentions they are from Auckland. Auckland is on the North Island and so Ghost Wave are not worth seeking out. All that matters in New Zealand is the South Island. There was Bressa Creeting Cake and once I loved them and they were from Auckland and there is the Gordons/Bailter Space from Wellington but that is about it. I am not an expert. I bet the Mint Chicks are from the North Island. Short interlude. Now pluckings. This is a bit like a This Mortal Coil record. Whispers again, woven among the plucking, the tone of vocals is so Ian Masters, when she repeats 'now that i'm awake', eerie. Is it an insult to compare a woman's voice to Ian? Ian is god. Know this. George Henderson is not a deity. He's a bit shabby. Now to a crescendo of strings and her voice soaring amidst the fluttering notes. It isn't doomy or foreboding but effervescent, lithe, graceful. It's less Van Dyke Parks on Water Wolves and more Roald Dahl, more sunshine after a brief deluge, the end of the beginning. It's a shoegazing record without the shoegazing. New York Times people reviewed it, Texture magazine named it their third most favorite record of the year and if I had been more astute a few months ago I might have added my unimpressive voice to the chorus of ecstatic praise. Is it composed well? You might ask this. I haven't any idea. Multi-tracked voices now, elegant and stirring. Her voice is a bit affectless but warm and uncommonly serene. Beautiful. As another interlude piece floats by I will admit to my longstanding Ian Masters obsession. It was a small group, a cult, no radiators or Nike shoes, it began before Hale Bopp even. Perhaps his silence is because we have done so little to coax him out of his higher plane of existence. We mere mortals can't communicate in a way that inspires his magnificence to descend to entertain the likes of us err...me. But now we have this record. it is also somewhat reminiscent of Shelleyan Orphan. Perhaps we must offer a sacrifice to please. We can take a large dinner knife and lunge it into the neck of a member of the Twees, missing all of the vital organs and primary arteries and give him fright enough to cast a spell upon this dark world and offer a portal of enlightenment to our dear lord. Or not, again. The interlude bit was gorgeous. Now to another song, violin, scrapes and whirrs, hand claps, jug bands--no no not jug bands but in that spirit. This is very Shelleyan Orphan, pretentious just the same. I was downtown this evening and it was warm and the air was accelerated through the tall buildings and it rose from underneath me and leavened my spirit and imbued me with a certain energy to come home and listen to this delightful record. I know, such ambition. If only you knew. I am trying to write a book, another book, I have an idea about the idea of human conscience being an extra terrestial parasite that arrived and through a long journey through lower buildings finally came into blossom in the human host. It isn't that interesting. I don't like science fiction. I don't read science fiction. I could claim that Homer was immune, his lineage leading through John Milton, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer to me. But this is a classical record with words by a bona fide poet, not a space alien. It is classical and I just finished reading an essay that offered a dissembling on the ills of classical music in our modern world. Apparently the focus on but a handful of composers and but a handful of their pieces has made everyone bored to death. Then they should listen to this record and then to Spoonfed Hybrid. It doesn't feel like a classical record. I don't know anything about classical music. I don't know anything about music. I used to listen to the Rachels and I listen to Peter Broderick and Johan Johannson and I assume it's low brow or possibly middle brow because I am not Terry Teachout. I'd rather be moved by something closer to my heart. There are monuments to the human experience and I can revel in those accomplishments as well as the next person but I am selfish in my desire to place a pop record close to my heart, near to my soul and carry on my symbiotic existence vicariously through the grooves of a beautiful pop song. I've returned to the Rougon-Macquart. I was a pretentious unmusical youth once and decided to read Zola's great cycle and I failed, I made it through 8 volumes. I just finsihed number nine. La Bete Humaine, it would make a fine musical with the farcical violence and heavy handed examination of the human susceptibility to lust and appetites. I particularly enjoyed the amazon woman holding back a team of horses in the path of a passenger train and the carnage so dearly detailed. It's a smashing read, very different to Germinal. Sarah Kirkland Snider could enlist me to write the words to her next majestic orchestration. Now to birdsong and hushed whispers, very This Mortal Coil. Are these synthesized birdsongs? Does anyone venture forth to deepest England's moth to record the fragile spring that comes 11 minutes earlier every year? I hope so. Mostly this song is A Cappella. Lovely. Now to plucks and violins, soaring bits right from the start, dramatic voice begins, beautiful, just so beautiful. Graham Greene talked about how it is so much easier to discuss the emotions of loss of misery than it is to recall convincingly the trials of happiness because pain is selfish and happiness involves the annihilation of self. I am not happy. I am not sad. I am selfish all the same. I don't want to compromise with anyone who would hear this record and not immediately decide to devote one's life dream to creating something only 10% as marvelous and wonderful. Are these classical drums? They sound like they might have come from a John Prine record. Drummers are unimportant in the greater scheme of things. I proclaimed the death of Chapterhouse arrived when the drummer arrived one day in possession of a song and failed to keep it to himself. Andrew Sherriff has won an Emmy and suddenly the drummer want sot write a song. Ugh. This song, Calypso is stunning, has the drama of a Jack string arrangement without the soppyness of a Jack song. What did ever happen to Jack? they made that dreadful EP on Elefant, I think it was Elefant, and then another record. I lost interest. Too Pure lost interest, by then they were slaves to the Mcclusky phenomenon. What a strange phenomenon when people will listen to Future of the LEft and not declare it absolutely the worst thing they have ever heard in their entire life up until that moment. A short symphonic swell in the surf. Fizzy. Next track, vinyl record crackles, dreamist undertones, fairy tale adventurism. This is very Water Wolves, the tyranny of the deep with its hand outreached waiting for a sacrifice to the dark underlord. Now to a guitar, singing violins or violas or whatever, conventionality. Did this really win the best Classical record of the year as voted on by really important people? It's a pop record. Did they also vote for Helleborine so far back? I hope so. Baby Teeth, Bones and Bullets, I love that title, now to a splendid crescendo, strings effortlessly gliding above the aching voices, shall i compare thee to an ochre sunset? No. The Indelicates it is not. There si so little of ambition to be spread around, could it be that I am overwhelmed by the idea that this is complex, intricate and above my station? Possibly. But in this world where so much mediocrity is praised it is nice to find something to pin to the mast as truly brilliant, something to cause all who catch its gaze to weaken and buckle at the knees and to fear the wrath of greatness of Penelope. Fear the Penelope. I've been driving with this record all week, getting to know this record, in a hostile environment, my driver's side window will not roll up and when I drive to work the temperature is still in the tens and so bundled up with the invigorating morning chill to brighten my senses I have come to appreciate this record deeply up until the last track with its bells and Louise Rutkowski-isms and if there were cassette versions safely stowed away in the wall mounted cases at Record Collector I would make a sojourn to Livonia and purchase these cassettes along with the remaining copies of Pail Saint and send them to all of my imaginary friends with love and affection and it would be perfect and when the left side of my body thaws n the early afternoon The returning sensation is bathed in the sense memory of the way my being was moved by this record.

Ensemble Excerpts is beautiful.

Motion Sickness of Time Travel is also.

New album by "Jonny"(Euros Childs and Norman Blake) is loads of fun. Maybe Euros needs someone to tell him the difference between when one thing may be considered eccentric and when the next thing is irredeemably awful.

Third Eye Foundation The Dark. There was mention by someone earlier of witches and I meant to make this entry an exposition about darkness. I enjoy the dark. I like how the evening world condemns the sun and the horizon crushed into a few feet outside of your being. I like when I hear voices in the night from around corners, on other stoops, in distress over unimportant matters. The day has so much less mystery. But then Trish Keenan died. I had posted a pointless bit of fluffy remembrance. I deleted it. I just read Bob Stanley's lovely bits about her. I didn't know her. Obviously. And perhaps I believed I was lucky because the only contact I had with Trish Keenan was through her beautiful creations. What success to live such a short life and to leave behind so many beautiful things to caress, to spread grace, to enthrall. And while the quest to make and disseminate beauty is not the most important calling it is a noble one. I've never created anything beautiful. If I had ambition and if I was the sort of person to make goals my goal would be beauty. To live it, to search it out, to create it, whatever. It has proved elusive. Why write of Trish Keenan in a Third Eye Foundation entry? Because the very first song has the feel of a lament. Actually all of the record has a feel of a lament, a requiem--for no one in particular but an evocation of the macabre and the remoteness of human existence at the end. She died without anyone being prepared for her death. It seems a shock to me and I am but a lonely fan thousands of mile from anywhere she has ever been. And so the distant moans, the icy keys and repetitive percussion seem farther away from moroseness and seem almost comforting in the unseasonable warmth of one January evening. It is the only evening of january 17th I will ever experience but then we take steps farther into the future than those that have departed. There have been faceless tributes on websites and they feel empty and cold, speak more of the music, speak more of the grace, speak more of the music, again. Unless you are Bob Stanley and she was your friend, then speak of her as you always had intended before she departed. I don't know if Third Eye Foundation can count Trish Keenan as an intimate. Perhaps the wordless tribute of music would be best, how really to describe the emotions that wash over and away when listening to Broadcast. They were smart, they were cool, effortlessly, they were avant-garde but they didn't allow that to make them insufferable. I am certain, probably, that Trish Keenan had loads of unlistenable self-important artists in her record collection but somehow Broadcast was always beautiful. Even when they made difficult it was beautiful. And that is the unending tribute. Third Eye Foundation make beautiful music. It is a different sort. Where one can imagine the possibilities of a world smitten by the music of Broadcast if only the next Ipod commercial was soundtracked by Where Youth and Laughter Go you can't quite imagine a planet hopelessly besotted by Anhedonia. Their is a majestic sort of towering doom, intense melancholy, bleakness, as graceful as a gazelle but as fierce as a back mamba. Black is key. The album title is The Dark and it is not a misnomer for describing what is contained within. A chorus of moans and howls, a lonely spare piano part and dread laden drum and bass. It's marvelous really. And as an elegy to Trish Keenan it works splendidly because when you are a distant star in a distant universe as a reference point of someone famous it is best to not display false emotion and celebrate a wonderful existence with the same wide-eared loe she bestowed upon so many of the unduly under appreciated. That difficult and esoteric need not be unlistenable is a lesson lost on many. Third Eye Foundation is difficult, but it is also dreamy and intensely pretty. Is than an objective opinion? Of course not. The first song has seamlessly segued into the second. More wondrousness. usually the path from difficult to indulgent leads through jazz. I was reading an article or a review of something, I think it was for True Grit or perhaps a television show I've forgotten the intention but the attitude throughout was one of the smug jazz fan. My workmate listens to jazz all day long at his desk, loud enough to torture my ears though really my tolerance is very low, and it is turgid nonsense. Why do jazz fans persist in believing somehow they have reached the apex of human evolution? Even John Lennon, who was decidedly silly on most subjects, disagrees something about old man in bars smoking and not listening. I forget the particulars. I did once see an op-ed on someone who cheered when he learned of the death of John Lennon because he was an enemy of jazz. Pah. Anyhow, it is alright for me to interject my own prejudices and biases while discussing a Third Eye Foundation record because do you realize how long their songs are and for me to try to describe the maudlin excess of a track like standard deviation would require a dexterity with the human language and understanding of the human psyche that I do not possess. Third Eye Foundation is Matt Elliott and he does seem to have a corner on this monstrous moroseness. It isn't heavy handed or dreary, it's atmospheric and soaring but at the center there is the hollowness of human existence. Some may find that depressing but for me it is gorgeous. But unlike a jazz fan who needs to crow about the superiority of their unloved genre in everything from television reviews to tourtiere recipes I have a more wide ranging sort of single mindedness. And while I think Third Eye Foundation is the near apotheosis of drum and bass i don't begrudge anyone who might rather want to listen to Katy Perry instead. Another seamless segue into the third track. Truly this is two pieces. Four epic parts of one construction and then the last track which is the pop hit. On the first bit we had tortured voices, on the second a crushed bit of distorted cacophony in the background and now a more minimal siren tone all accompanied by a steady heart beat meter measured witheringly with drum and bass programming of other more sylphlike figures on the sampler. Who knew that a Third Eye Foundation record was even a possibility? Now things are becoming more pulse quickening, it feels uneasy, distracting, physically uncomfortable. Beautiful. The mastery of this record is the sense or aura that envelops the listener and pulls him or her along involuntarily through the recesses of deepest, darkest human emotion. It is as emo as any music you will hear and it is wordless, it supplants the cliche of human suffering with the purer instinct of emotion. Your reaction to the music is entirely instinctual whether that reaction be found in revulsion or in bliss. I bet Matt Elliott has loads of jazz records and surely there are some jazz obscurities compressed and mutilated beyond recognition except by autopsy hidden within these epic tracks but I can love jazz influences even as I despise jazz and jazz fans. It is all so circular and claustrophobic now. He doesn't make records to be consumed lightly, when listening there is a commitment required or it becomes static. i suppose a jazz fan would say the same thing. ugh. Am I as insufferable as a jazz fan? No. Because I don't think this music is important in any historical context and in any context really, it pleases my heart and that is all I ask of music. I don't believe I have taste that is superior or inferior to anyone but it is as singular as anyone else and so I write with the selfish sense that my impressions are unique even if my descriptions of those impressions are less so. Fourth track now, the programming is brought to the fore and the glowing cinematic soundscape drifts deeper into the mix. It feels more disoriented especially after the concerted melancholic droning of the first three tracks. Again, they are part of a whole. It isn't something entirely removed from what he has done in the past, I hear bits of the first album, bits of Little Lost Soul, etc...in everything but he has become master class architect of human disagreeableness and so the dread momentum seems almost effortless as if he sat down at his computer and it poured forth from his fingertips in a single exhalation of desolation of woe. Now to the final scene featuring soul maddening disorientation and jarring climaxes and a very jazz like feeling of discombobulation, five songs all being played at once barely contained within the framework so carefully constructed over the preceding thirty-five minutes. Astonishing. A brilliant surprise. He stepped out of his dull, frankly, singer-songwriter clothes and back into his star collapsing alter ego and created a masterpiece. Last track now. The pop hit. The one that everyone is complaining about because it doesn't fit the overarching theme of the previous tracks but its genius. It reminds of the Semtex 12", small, a miniature electronic symphony of all the things you wish were included in Boymerang records. Will Graeme Sutton return to Boymerang as successfully after his own disastrous rebirth as Bark Psychosis? It is something to hope for. Perhaps a tribute to Trish Keenan and a signal to the world that beautiful things are sometimes hidden for reasons no one will ever understand. Third Eye Foundation is beautiful, the sort which thrills you with terror, the most exciting sort really.

Klima Serenades & Serinettes. I am not much for Piano Magic. Everyone everywhere makes allegations over their loveliness, tendency toward beguilement, etc...I found it all a bit dull. Klima is in Piano Magic. She sings, probably not enough. The first song here is a Piano Magic cover by someone in Piano Magic. I don't know whether it was she who sang it in Piano Magic. It's a lovely song. Is it as lovely when dressed in Piano Magic? Unknown. Even here it is metered and stutter stepped but not to any detriment. It's a terrific opening number. Intrigue and 'Peter the Painter' drama played out as if in a cinema. I listened to the radio today and on the air was a university professor or philosophy and he moving recounted the greatest moments and missteps of many of the great thinkers and statesmen of the west and he seemed most pleased with Winston Churchill. Not FE Smith. They did not mention the siege at Sydney Street. Second track, By Your SIde, another dark, spare track. Piano Magic write historical lyrics don't they? The one about rifles is meant to be about WWI. I've just recently finished Storm of Steel and it is amazing. How do you tell a wound is not so bad? His brains are not streaming down his face. It is an odd thing though, apparently rewritten 8 times?! Has Ernst Junger written anything else worth reading? ANd really divorced from the realism it is essentially a diary of his time in Hell although he seems quite jolly all the way through. I doubt Piano Magic took as their inspiration Storm of Steel as that book is vivid and exciting and well they are, as mentioned previously, dull. Klima doesn't write historical lyrics though as an english as a second language person the lyrics are something clever. Naughty bits about cutting people up, storing them in jars and keeping them beside you. Charming, really. Maybe if Piano Magic had simply adapted a Barbara Tuchmann novel to music they would capture lightning in a bottle. Much of this record, Klima's second, is dark and minimalist seeming. On By My Side it is multi-tracked synth pipes? Perhaps they are real. Call me William Prynne, my ears are shabby. A sever impediment for certain when writing about "music". I could take part in the fashion of the day and spread spurious rumours, speculate wildly, play my role as Matthew Hopkins and proclaim Klima as a witch and be immortalized as a villain for time eternal even as I might die before my 30th birthday. I've been writing a great deal of popular history, my new friends are Diana Manners and Rainsborough and the phossy jaw girls and the aforementioned Peter the Painter. Klima's lyrics are not bad but it's the same old vague wannabe enchanting mediocrity saved only by her inherent loveliness. Whispers and gentle plucks and trills and prettiness. Third song has passed, similar to the first two. Now a wordless bit of comeliness. She takes brilliant photographs and as such I could love her, I am certain, I could marry her and follow her around the world and play the musical box and haunt her diminutive shadows and protect her from the would be Matthew Hopkins and prevent her from having her skull removed and placed ina freezer as the tragic fates could not forfend as witnessed by the tragic tales of today's Arizona. This is not of the southwest, it is wintry though, and outside the winter has taken hold, seven inches of snow being transformed as I type, the ephemeral air the freighted cold compressing the snow into a magnificent lattice which will crunch with the sound of warmth forlorn. This song is a bit nice, very nice, a bit more urgent than the first four tracks. Now to song 6. It is time for the ILX poll for best albums of the year. I nominated this album, I predict ero votes. I really don't like that place. In some corners there are people who are begging for someone to convince them that they really should enjoy something that they do not enjoy. Is this possible ? I could be convinced that there is a loose objective standard on what delineates good music from poor music but there is no adjoining standard when it comes to emotional attachment to music. Why would I propose marriage to Klima and not to Esben the Witch? I don't know. This song, this winter drawn clear, I find delightful when earlier I was cringing while listening to Esben the Witch's new album. FE Smith would not be an Esben the Witch fan. I bet they will be huge and will win the album of the year on ILX some year soon. Things Get Better With Time now and I prefer it when the man is not singing but this is the weakest track on the album. The track where she decided or someone mentioned that it was all a bit mopey right? So she's "rocking" out, and some dude was walking past the studio and was roped in for some on call dreariness. Oh dear. The first album didn't have a boring dude on it. He's probably got a PHD in dreary, a member of the over credentialed class without any skills for anything other than writing record reviews for websites and government work. He could train Mossad's secret agent vultures and sharks with just another year or two in university with David Gilmour's son. When I was in Myrtle Beach I marveled at the beautiful Turkey Vultures that migrated from the gulf course to the warmth of buildings and houses when the snow fell. We don't have turkey vultures here. I don't believe. I should look up the range of Turkey Vultures but their ugliness reminds me of my car and I think I love my car. Sylvia now and back to the gentle balladry with the stuttered percussion. We do miss Guy Fixsen, slightly. Possibly we miss Alan Moulder as well. Wouldn't he be brilliant with Klima? Yes. Now to the "jam". A bit of Math rock verbalizing. I am currently reading Euclid and his Modern Rivals and have decided that should I fail in my endeavour to write a best selling novel(already accomplished) then I want to be Lewis Carrol or at the least Charles Dodgson and write a witty defense of someone important and uninspiring to the youth of today. Euclid used to mean something to gentlemen who craved dignity and respect. What is Eculid's standing today? Much diminished, certainly. I could write an allegorical defense of Lysander Spooner. The ghost of a social anarchist returned to defend himself against usurpation by the likes of Glenn Beck. It would be brilliant, I could insert a superfluous bit of erotica between Lysander and Joan of Arc in greek to appear learned and wise. I am neither. This track is a bit meandering but I don't mind. It is the twinkles, combined with the compressed snow under foot and sun it turns to fairy dust. Hopefully she doesn't marry John McEntire instead and then deliver a third album filled only with noodly math rock instrumentals. last track, more softness, more slowness, more quietness, words concerning the sea, blackness, the depths of human emotion in seven not profound clauses. It's lovely, really, it's a plaid dress and a bob haircut and a tender strum of the guitar that caresses my inner existence.

It turns out that I don't much like The Beets. Their fans should listen to My Darling You!. Is Sweden cooler than Brooklyn? Yeah, probably. Why is Captured Tracks so hip?

The Love Language Libraries

I love this album. There's my objectivity then, shot through and diminished. This was my travel record. I didn't actually require a travel record this year. Last year, I needed, desperately, a travel record. The year before it was a Frida Hyvonen record. The weather outside my window has turned to Frida weather. The walk through the half empty terminal this year upon returning home felt different, instead of the willfully obscure it was tender exuberance. The Love Language is endowed with this marvelous spirt, an enthusiasm that is a really remarkable force acting upon my psyche. It impels motion. I listened while I sat next to mute airplane rowmates who misspelled react on their Ipod scrabble and when running in the South Carolina snowfall and along the beach that was truly deserted save for a few people taking photographs beneath the pier and a man running in shoes where his toes fit individually into each toe hole, and I listened alone but then music is always a lonely endeavour for me. 'Pedals" sounds like Stephen Cogle singing indiepop, it's a tremor of human consciousness. He's a crooner. He possesses a powerful croon, with power enough to knock over buildings in some rampage of emotion, it is a voice to crash brash cathedrals and to make the stars feel strangely close at home. I have never heard the first Love Language album. It is meant to be intimate and forlorn. I am not sure that was his calling and I would certainly not want to diminish his mien by calling him a sad sack troubadour without ambition. Maybe it is the producer but...this voice was meant for cataclysms and monuments. Stephen Cogle is honestly the closest approximation I can offer. But the Terminals? No, it does not sound like the Terminals. Not even when the Terminals wrote their gothic renditions of garage pop such as Frozen Car. The organ is prominent and soaring, the drums are thunderous, everything is to the red actually, it plays very loudly in my ears near to the point of distortion and dissonance but it wouldn't be as thrilling if it didn't seem on the verge of collapse. It is indiepop, I suppose but not in the epithetical sense of the word, the song just now, Brittany's Back has a country-ish twang to it but still his voice is as insistent as a steaming train. Incredible. This year the new year brings different emotions. Death shrouded my heart last year, from Seattle to home, sitting in an airplane waiting to see the end of an imaginary existence. There are diaries that provide the backing story and it is interesting to read about your imaginary existence in someone else's marvelous penmanship. This year my mouth has opened and words have come out. A rare feat. Track now is This Blood is Our Own, still incredible, the organ crescendo bit now is spine tingling, so many cliches, it seems as if when I really am impressed I lose my ability to express myself. There was once 'celestial braising', oh dear, and now it is 'marvelous' or 'incredible' or whatever. I forget who it was that said you should never use a cliche in writing ever, if you recognize any phrase as one that has existed in any prose or poetry anywhere then you must jettison this. But no one reads this, not especially since I have lost my heart when it comes to music and only occasionally have the flame stoked tepidly by majestic records such as this. I could look up the quotation I mean to impress you with but I was watching a show on Joe Strummer today and a cavalcade of unimpressive figures rolled out their own quotations and I was bored by them all even as I find Joe Strummer fascinating because the man was a genius in the sense that I think he knew exactly who he was and how he was meant to interact with the world. That is power. I am still unaware of what I mean to anyone or anything other than the first breath each morning. Summer Dust is on now, well actually it has just finished, more brilliance, a slowie, a country croon. Beautiful. Each track is a wonder. Blue Angel has started now and it sounds like some relic from a distant age. Again, perhaps these are all manipulations by a clever producer but the voice is no feat of science and labour. The words? Hmm...I suppose they are serviceable. Aside from the 'powdered cannons' bit in the first song nothing can move past the bombast of the performance. This is no slight. Perhaps it will take Gordon from ballboy to come along later with a stripped down acoustic recording with cello in tow to help me realize the brilliance of his pen apart from the magnificence of his voice. I am maybe overstating things. It's the heft of his voice, the musculature that impresses me so, it is actually a bit nasal but in this world of muffled mumblings it is a joy to hear a voice so distinct and prominent. Winter arrived only yesterday. Now to a jaunty, jangly number with rockabilly lyrics and back alley rubbish bin lid percussion and joy, armloads of joy. The first record was a lament. His girlfriend let him. His heart died. I may have been more open to that last year. My heart didn't die, it was paralyzed. New Year's eve is the saddest night of the year. A retelling, nay an audit of 12 months of regret and wasted opportunities can make for a weary evening spent alone in the dark writing about sunny pop music. Anthophobia now, marvelous. I can't tell you if the songs are great, perhaps not, I've sen other reviews and they are occasionally tepid but his performance is inspiring. When I recount the highlights of this year I think only of one night when I discovered I might mean something to someone sometime. When someone proposes to you there is that brief glimpse into a possible future and it doesn't seem horrible. But when you say no, there isn't a possibility of recovery. I could play The Love Language the next time, if ever there is a next time. But fear of being alone isn't enough. Next track, Horophones, loud and dissonant and still sooooo good. I find that when there are long absences I tend to describe my past recollections only vaguely too timid to reveal anything other than my visceral reactions instead of a logical examination of all that lead to my demise because it is a loop that I have grown tiresome of. I could make a resolution to change editors but at this point it may be genetics. And a bad haircut, I have the world's second worst haircut, second only to some person from the Joe Strummer documentary. Wilmont, starts off as a tender distantly recorded lament and now has bloomed into a glamourous ballad. Is this the album of the year? Possibly. I tend to discover albums of the year always in December. The most played record of my year is perhaps a toss-up between the Lucky Soul album which dominated the early part of the year, the Club 8 record which I thin is completely genius however unlikely that sounds and Sally Seltmann. I think record of the year comes down to this and Sally Seltmann. Sally Seltmann touches my hart with her joy, my heart is steamrolled by the truckloads of joy here.